Strings from Berlin, Tapes from London – Sounds and Presets
Plus 128 BRAND NEW JV-1080 Prests and Synthwave Sounds for Diva
3,0 / 5,0 | 
Elusive Mellotron sounds in the form of the London Tapes from the Streetly Archive, via GForce Software, and a beautiful Chamber Orchestra recorded in Berlin.
Sounds and Presets
The Streetly Tapes – London for M-Tron Pro IV by GForce Software
M-Tron Pro has long been the standard for authenticity and depth of catalogue when it comes to software Mellotron emulations. It is, without question, the gold standard. A lot of that is down to the long collaboration that GForce have had with Streetly Electronics.
Streetly has a lengthy and illustrious history with the instrument and its library of tapes, and their years-long cooperation with GForce means that M-Tron Pro and, by extension, their Mk.II, are the cream of the crop. The Streetly library tapes have been a huge part of that.
The London tapes library is, sadly, the last in the series, a series that now sports nine varied and unique collections of Mellotron sounds that you can experience in wondrous detail and with a wealth of manipulation at your fingertips.
What sets ‘London’ apart is yet another fantastical story in the history of this already well-storied instrument. It all has to do with a strange disconnect between Streetly in Birmingham and Mellotronics in London. I’ll let Dave Spiers captivating video tell the whole story of these tapes, but it goes something like this.
In an effort to make more tapes, and with Streetly in Birmingham busy with M400 production, Mellotronics decided to make their own. But they used not only a different recording technique and a different brand of tapes, they also used a differently aligned tape head. Hence, the London tapes have a slightly duller quality, some say nasal.
And so here are those sounds. Meticulously sampled, as ever, and bundled with 20 super-rare tape banks that constitute the last of the Streetly archives. It is the end of an era, but one we can now enjoy in full. You can buy The Streetly Tapes – London for just £24.99 ex. VAT as a time-limited introductory offer, before rising to £49.99 ex. VAT when the offer ends.
Tides by Orchestral Tools
Rachel Portman is an Emmy and Academy Award-winning composer with over a century of scores to her name, covering TV, film, theatre and opera. She is one of the U.K.’s most celebrated and revered composers with an outstanding and diverse body of work.
She has now teamed up with Berlin-based Orchestral Tools to produce a stunning chamber orchestra sample library, specifically designed to convey the wealth of human emotion and expression. It is a hugely ‘musical’ library that has been designed to be used outside of conventional libraries.
The library comprises six first violins, four violas, four celli, three solo strings (violin, cello and bass), seven solo woodwinds (flute, alto flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon and soprano saxophone, two solo brass (trombone and French horn), and six special character instruments.
These include a Musette accordion, mandolin, concert guitar, dulcimer, piano and harp. As with all Orchestral Tools libraries, there is a huge amount of detail, not only in the sampling but also in the scripting, which delivers tools such as tempo-synced patterns and measured trills.
All of this runs in SINE, Orchestral Tools’ free player, which manages both the instrument and all of your OT content. Tides is available with a time-limited introductory 30% discount, at just €349.00, rising to €499.00 thereafter.
Dreamers Stash for Roland JV-1080 by Ocean Swift
Ah, the Roland JV-1080. Along with the Akai S1000 and the Atari ST computer, it was pretty much in every studio, professional or home-based, throughout the 1990s and beyond. It was a solid, reliable workhorse.
Derived from the Sample + Synthesis methods that Roland pioneered with the D-50, the JV-1080 was choc full of some weally amazing sounds that, like many synths at the time, wound up on countless hit records and became true pop staples.
Now, our friends at Ocean Swift, have created 128 brand new patches for the hardware, rackmount unit and, in what is a very clever move, ported them to Roland Cloud’s virtual JV-1080 so that those of us who sold their hardware units back in the day, can now enjoy them all over again in software!
Created with cinematic soundscapes in mind, the Dreamers Stash contains a wealth of atmospheric patches, pads, ambiences and immersive sounds, as well as plenty of synth arps, leads, basses and more.
How cool is it that there are companies out there that still support legacy instruments like this, and are simultaneously making them available for their present-day software conversions? Ocean Swift also suggests that the bank is partially compatible with other JV-related synths, such as the JV-2080, XP-50 and XV-5080, but that this compatibility is not guaranteed. Your mileage may vary, as the kids say.
Dreamers Stash is currently on offer with €5 off at just €20.00 from the Ocean Swift website until June 19th 2025.
GUNSHIP Diva Expansion 1 for U-HE Diva
GUNSHIP are, in their own words, a “neon-soaked, late-night, sonic getaway drive with cinematic vocals and cyberpunk values”. They are, unashamedly, a synthwave act, but in my humble opinion, one of the finer ones, given their ability to marry up epic 80s instrumentation and production with decent lyrics.
I must admit, I grew quite tired of the genre. It became hugely derivative, to the point of being massively incestuous. In a previous role in radio, I was subjected to countless online shows where I was hard-pressed to decipher where one track ended and another began. GUNSHIP definitely stand apart from all of that.
And now, they bring us a bank of sounds that forms part of their sonic toolkit, using U-HE’s much-celebrated soft synth, Diva. Diva has been around for well over a decade now, yet remains hugely popular, thanks to its sound and versatility.
Diva’s raison d’être is to deliver the best of analogue in a software package, inspired by elements of legendary hardware synths, and making components of them available to mix and match. This flexibility makes it the perfect tool for those looking to recreate the sounds of the 80s.
The GUNSHIP Diva expansion contains 58 original presets designed by Dan Haigh, one-third of GUNSHIP, and contains all the staples of a preset pack. Dan says, and I quote…
“I’ve tried to program and provide you with the type of sounds which immediately resonate with me and evoke strong emotions due to their cultural associations – the types of sound that made me fall in love with synthesis in the first place.”
Purchase GUNSHIP Diva Expansion for £30 from the GUNSHIP website here.
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